


Babies Come With Hats - But Not Language Skills

by friendoftheJabberwock



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Family, Fanart, Gen, Parenthood, Slice of Life, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24571438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendoftheJabberwock/pseuds/friendoftheJabberwock
Summary: As Communications Director, Toby Ziegler is a master of expressing exactly what he wants to say, when he wants to say it. But what happens when he is suddenly the father of two tiny humans who have yet to utter a single coherent word?(Also includes a pencil sketch of Toby I drew a while back because Why Ever Not).
Relationships: Huck Wyatt-Ziegler & Molly Wyatt Ziegler & Toby Ziegler
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Babies Come With Hats - But Not Language Skills

It had been a terribly long day. Andy was caught in traffic after a town hall event in her district ran late, and so Toby had been with the five-month-old twins far longer than he had anticipated. The twins wouldn't sleep, and fussed, and cried, and Toby's Monday morning commute was approaching far too quickly. Now he was slumped on a scruffy blanket in his backyard, along with the twins, hoping the fresh air might be helpful in some as yet undetermined way.

As someone accustomed to frequently voicing his opinions and having his instructions followed, the day was particularly frustrating. Before parenthood he had never been met with such a wall of incomprehension.

"Do you children know what my job is? My job – the thing I do constantly that buys diapers and formula and all the things you must be hiding or stealing because they just – poof! – disappear more quickly than Ainsley Hayes's lunch?" Toby flicked an invisible magic wand.

"I am the White House Communications Director. This means that I, Tobias Zachary Ziegler, am responsible for making sure every last comma and apostrophe and semicolon and dotted 'i' and crossed 't' communicates the President's policies exactly. If they do not, the Sultan of Qumar just might understand altogether the wrong idea, and just might be unhinged enough one night to command his generals to bomb Israel, and the generals just might be cowed sufficiently to follow his commands, and we all just might wake up to, you know, nuclear war or something."

A stream of saliva was trailing down Huckleberry's chin now, and Molly was quite busy with flailing about on the picnic blanket. Toby tried again. "Nuclear war means, well, _kaboom!_ " Huck whimpered. Toby sighed and rummaged for a napkin.

"So, it's a slightly important job, yes? Five months ago my concerns were things like punctuating Sam Seaborn's latest State of the Union draft. Then you…" He frowned. "You tadpoles happened and here I am, for the first time of my entire professional career, unable to communicate some spectacularly rudimentary concepts."

"I am a failure. I am undone." He gestured wildly. "I am insufficient!"

He paused now. "But what is my existence without impossible challenges and ridiculous deadlines and crazy new things all the time? If I ran out of this type of stuff I might be forced to, you know, go on vacation. And go to beaches. And drink things with ridiculous little umbrellas instead of working weekends and nights and consuming unhealthy amounts of unhealthy things and growing gray hairs at alarming rates, which is of course my true calling in life."

"It could be worse, then." He grinned (or would have, if the trademark Toby Ziegler over-the-moon face were not in fact identical in every way to his standard expression á la Oscar the Grouch). "We'll figure this out. I'll figure this out."

"In the meantime, just know that you're pretty okay. For tiny humans, that is. You have excellent heads."

The twins were by now thoroughly occupied with tasting the local grass and finding it not particularly to their liking.

Toby was very, very tired.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/188756171@N05/49977215362/in/dateposted-public/)

(Portraits aren't exactly my strong suit, but they're fun!)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello internet! I haven't written much fanfic in the past and have never posted anything before (COVID-19 lockdown has given me the time and energy to write), so any constructive feedback would be welcome.


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